Tag Archives: Pharisee

All in the family: Jesus and the Pharisees.

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The Pharisees were caught in a sitcom.

I think that they are like the dad, the one that tries everything to solve a problem and nothing works?

Last thing they knew, Jesus had left town. Their sources told them that he was back home, up in the northern part of the country. Good riddance, they thought.

The Feast of Tabernacles started, the happy feast, the party feast, the “pitch a tent and sleep outside and remember how God brought us through the wilderness” feast. It would be a horrible time for Jesus to show up for people trying to maintain order.  Jesus was the kind of person that would take a wilderness experience and turn it into some metaphor for deliverance and freedom.

It must have been a relief for the leadership to hear nothing of Jesus on the first day of the feast. Nothing on the second day. Nothing on the third or fourth days.

Dad leans back in the recliner. Mr Wilson thinks Dennis moved.

And then Jesus shows up.

Andy sends Barney to find out what’s happening. Jim sends his wife’s brother, Andy. Tim (the Toolman) Taylor sends Al Borland to bring Jesus in for a conversation.

Barney and Andy and Al come back in.

“Where’s Jesus?” says Andy/Jim/Tim/Chief Priest.

“Have you heard him talk? No one ever sounded like that. It was amazing!” says B/A/A.

“Bah. What would we expect from a mob? There isn’t one intelligent person who would say what you just said.”

“Just curious,” says Opie, says Cheryl, says Wilson and Jill and Nicodemus. “Should we talk with him before we try to kill him?”

The camera comes in close on the face of the leading character. Rage and frustration and betrayal and fear twist together.

“Are you leaving as sane us only?”

—

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Clueless disciples

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Jesus loved to tell stories. Jesus loved to be subtle. Jesus loved to find out if hearts were paying attention.

Sometimes it didn’t exactly work.

—-

Jesus and the disciples were heading to the other side. They kept crossing the lake, moving from crowd to crowd, need to need, person to person. This time, in the process of packing for the trip, no one remembered to grab the bread.

And Jesus says, “”Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

They decided he was talking about forgetting the bread.

I’m not sure why they thought that answer made sense. Maybe there was a brand of special bread: Holysum. It was endorsed by leaders of both spiritual/political parties. In order to follow Jesus, you should boycott this bread.

Jesus stopped them.

“If you are short of bread, you should know by now that I can feed thirteen as easily as 5,000 (20,000 counting families).”

What Jesus wanted them to understand was that who you follow matters more than food. Jesus can provide food, easily, miraculously. But when people drift away from following him to following others, even to following religion, it’s much harder to fix that problem.

What you listen to, what you think about, what you take in, works its way all the way through your life. If you allow the teaching of the religious to work its way through your heart, you will end up creating false tests for Jesus. You will end up being more religious than God.

They finally understood, the disciples did. At least they understood that Jesus was talking about teaching rather than bread. And they offer a lesson.

Don’t be more concerned with supper than with what you watch while you eat: one is bad for the body, the other for the soul.

Sometimes you have to start over.

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You are working on a project and things get complicated. There are revisions and modifications. The documentation doesn’t keep up with the adjustments. Someone becomes the keeper of the knowledge and the explanations. Then everyone gets in a hurry and doesn’t care to hear the explanations any more, they just want to have the knowledge. And sometimes, the knowledge itself gets shortened, gets condensed, gets convoluted.

And that kind of confusion can happen on one simple project over the course of a few months.

Imagine a much larger project, one spanning millennia. After thousands of team members and hundreds of project managers, such a project can become large, overgrown with rules unrelated to purpose, with practices that are believed to be about something that was never intended. What had been a laser-sharp purpose to change the world has become an hierarchy committed to surviving.

When John’s followers come to Jesus to ask about fasting, they are coming from within the old structure. They even acknowledge this by saying, “we fast and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don’t.” [Matthew 9:14-17]. They are assuming that fasting is the way to show obedience, to be spiritual.

And then Jesus talks about how sometimes you have to push reset on the project, you have to start over, you have to make a new garment or start with a fresh wineskin.

 But it isn’t just about the container, about putting new stuff in new containers. Jesus says, “while the Bridegroom is around, you celebrate.”

Don’t decide what God will want and then do that no matter what. Instead, be with God and follow his lead. If he is having a party, then fasting is inappropriate. If he is speaking softly, then waiting and listening is the right thing to do.

Otherwise, everything gets complicated.

follow me.

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Matthew could have made it complicated. Matthew could have made it clear.

Matthew is telling the story of his own decision to follow Jesus. He could have provided lots of background about what his life had been like, what his business practices were. He could have provided us with pictures of his heart, his soul, his motivation. He could have really helped us understand.

But he didn’t.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9)

Jesus saw Matthew. Jesus invited Matthew. Matthew followed.

I’m sure Matthew knew about Jesus. I’m sure  Matthew had heard stories. He may even have had conversations.

I also know, however, that some people just decide things. They quickly count up the costs and benefits. They weigh the choices efficiently. Matthew, after all, was a tax collector. He was familiar with assessments. And he makes his description of this assessment efficient.

And then he has a party. He invites his old friends and his new friends. He doesn’t know any better. They don’t know any better.

Only the pharisees know better.

“Jesus,” they said. “you aren’t supposed to be eating in places like this. You aren’t supposed to be eating with people like this. It’s ruining your reputation. It’s damaging any hope you have of being rabbi of the year.”

Jesus shrugs. There isn’t much he can do. He tries to explain that a doctor who never sees patients, who never spends any time with sick people, who never touches burns and cuts and blood and pain, isn’t much of a doctor at all. Somehow, I think, they miss the point.

Although, I wonder.

Did they wish they could laugh with Jesus, too?

following the storyline – holy week

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We’re spending Holy Week following Jesus.

On Monday, he spent much of the day in the temple courts telling stories. He talked about two sons. One said he wouldn’t go do the chores, and then went out and took care of them. The other said that he would do exactly as asked, but then didn’t get around to it.

He talked about a man who had a vineyard and then hired someone to take care of it for him. When the man sent servants to get the rent, in the form of grapes, the renters beat some, killed some, threw stones at some. Then the man sent his son. The renters killed him, believing they would end up inheriting the property.

Compelling stories. The first resonates with any parent. The second sounds like a story that would be made into a TV movie. They are part of the interesting part of Matthew.

However, they aren’t just stories. They had a point.

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet. [Matthew 21:45-46]

It was exactly like writing a blog post, knowing that one of your readers will know from the details that you are talking about them. And knowing they understand what you are saying about them. And knowing that they will be able to tell  from all the comments agreeing with you that they are in trouble. And knowing they’ll want to kill you.

Only Jesus knew that they really did want to kill him.

And Jesus knew that many after the pharisees would also look religious but not follow God from the inside out.

Right?